GERC: Non-Guild Energetic Investigation (NGEI)

The NGEI is an important branch of the GERC, but it is kept relatively quiet; while it is not an official secret, most people outside of the GERC have no idea it exists. The NGEI’s job is to study and classify the so-called “magic” performed by Sorcerers, and to track the various sorcerer sects that still exist scattered throughout Tamarra.

A century ago, as the 4900s just began, the NGEI was on a course to eliminating sorcery completely, due to an extreme wing in Frestehal that was attempting mass extermination of sorcerers. Decades after this cultural genocide began, they had whittled the magic-using population of Tamarra to a fraction of what it used to be. The focus of the NGEI today is almost entirely thanks to Landra Farrier, a human Charismatic who quietly opposed this extremist Guild-led extermination. Farrier argued that because the Sorcerers’ population was so well controlled, the Guilds would be better served keeping the small remaining population alive for study. Surely the “savages” could turn up useful Energetic knowledge that the “civilized” Guilds could appropriate for themselves.

Landra knew that if she was too vocal in her opposition to – as she repeatedly called it – “the obscene atrocities committed by the Guilds in Frestehal,” she could end up in prison, or worse. She spent decades of her life organizing and running a system of support networks and hiding places for sorcerers, keeping them one step ahead of the most extreme Guild factions. Farrier also occupied an important position within the task force set on eliminating the sorcerers, gaining her information from the inside.

Years later, the NGEI have kept the spirit of Farrier’s mission alive. They study magic-using cultures anthropologically and Energetically, gleaning what knowledge they can from them, but they also keep this information staunchly out of other hands – except, of course, for the watchful discretion of Acquisitions & Archival. While rumors say that the NGEI’s libraries include specific spells and rituals of some power, their most valuable assets are undoubtedly information. The NGEI has collected data – so the whispers go – on the inner turnings of the Law that lives in Naldrin, a kind of “law elemental” that arose as the result of centuries of bureaucracy so intricate that it became its own, vast, sorcerous ritual. They also have some information on the geography of continents that supposedly exist beyond the spines of the oceans – information which they may possibly share with the Sojourners. The locations of sorcerers’ tribes, or anything else that could be used to harm them, are kept under lock and key.

The current division head of the NGEI is Terma Lanchet, a human Mystic who is perhaps more beloved than any other division head. Her researchers have nothing but love for her; she runs a tight administrative ship, and manages to keep the RDG pleased with the non-growth of sorcerous tribes while assiduously avoiding any violence against them.